Only The Money Was In Exile

On another occasion the eight-year-old genius was asked why at the end of the Parshas Miketz there is a line denoting that it contains 2,025 words. The other parshiyots do not have this.

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The child replied, “Chanukah falls out when we read this parsha. On Chanukah we light the candle, ner, eight times. The letters of the word ner, numerically represent 250, eight times this equal 2,000. The ﬁrst candle is lit on the 25th day of Kislev, add this to the 2,000 and we have 2,025, the number of words in this parsha. This is a hidden prophecy that the holiday of Chanukah would come out during that week.”

Waiting 99 Years To Fulfill A Mitzvah

Once the young genius was asked the following question: The Talmud (Kidushin 82a) tells us that Avraham observed all the mitzvos of the Torah even before it was given. If that is true, why did he wait until Hashem told him at the age of 99 years, to have a bris milah?

Why didn’t he do it in his young years?

When this same question was put to the Vilna Gaon when he was only a boy of ﬁve, he replied, “Chazal teach (Kidushin 31a) that a person who is told to do something and does it, receives a greater reward than one who is not told and does the mitzvah. Therefore, Avraham waited for this mitzvah until he was told, for he could have redone all the other mitzvos after he was told, but not bris milah, which once performed can never be repeated.”

However, young Moshe Chaim Ephraim had this answer “Avraham was able to fulfill all of the mitzvos of the Torah, because there was no sin or prohibition attached to their fulfillment. But circumcision would have been a sin if he attempted it before he was told to do so by G-d. For the Gemara (Baba Kama 91b) speciﬁcally prohibits a person from injuring himself. Therefore, unless it was a Divine commandment Avraham was not allowed to circumcise himself.”